Random books from wunderkind's library
The Quarterly Review, Vol. 181 by Various
Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays by Germaine Bree
The Book of D'Ni by Rand Miller
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
My Universities by Maxim Gorky
Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Members with wunderkind's books
Member connections
Friends: bibliobibuli, DameMuriel, goldfishdevastation, socky
Interesting libraries: ARidiculousMan, benwaugh, bibliobibuli, Caroline_McElwee, coffeezombie, davidabrams, devenish, EnochSoames, ifjuly, jwhenderson, lilithcat, marietherese, miss_read, shearrob, Sovay, sylphette, thorold, tomcatMurr, twacorbies
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wunderkind's reviews
Reviews of wunderkind's books, not including wunderkind's
Member: wunderkind
Library869 books — see library
Reviews20 reviews — see reviews
Cloudstag cloud, author cloud
TagsNR (534), Britain and Ireland (386), 20th century (post-1950) (331), 20th century (pre-1950) (267), USA (259), non-fiction (243), college (153), WBL (138), 19th century (125), HS (112) — see all tags
Groups75 Books Challenge for 2008, Anglophiles, Blitz Books: the WWII British Home Front, 1938 to 1945, BritWit, Chicagoans, INTPs, Neuroscience, Penguin Classics, The Diogenes Club, UChicago — show all groups
Favorite authorsChris Adrian, Beryl Bainbridge, James Baldwin, Max Beerbohm, Malcolm Bradbury, Italo Calvino, Truman Capote, G. K. Chesterton, Noel Coward, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Anne Fadiman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Andre Gide, Aldous Huxley, Jerome K. Jerome, W. Somerset Maugham, A. A. Milne, Mervyn Peake, Marcel Proust, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf (Shared favorites)
Favorite bookstores57th Street Books, O'Gara and Wilson, Booksellers, Powell's - Hyde Park, Seminary Co-op Bookstore
About me An undergrad not-so-diligently pursuing degrees in psychology and biology. Other than that, my life more or less boils down to family, books, and dogs (cats too, I suppose). I live for charity used book sales.
Now reading:
Read in 2008:
The Best
Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald (twice)
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE by Sarah Helm
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Criticisms and Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens by G.K. Chesterton
Letters to His Daughter by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Bookshop at Curzon Street: Letters Between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
Black Dogs by Ian McEwan
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
The Rest
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (reread)
Memoirs of a Professional Cad by George Saunders
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley
When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne
Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
Haiku Humor edited by Stephen Addiss
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
Rough Crossing by Tom Stoppard
The Human Factor by Graham Greene
Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
Young Adolf by Beryl Bainbridge
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms by J.P. Donleavy
On the Razzle by Tom Stoppard
The Pooh Perplex by Frederick C. Crews
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
The Yellow Dog by Georges Simenon
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
About my library What's on Librarything is what's on my shelves, except for about twenty duplicate copies that I've left out. I suppose a lot of it's British. There are relatively few female writers (~15% of the total), but I don't know why. Books not originally published in English are also sadly underrepresented (~25%). I've got a goodly number of plays and short stories and volumes of poetry, but my true love is the novel. I'm just now getting into non-fiction: after years of trying to force myself into philosophy, I find that history and science are the only things for which I have any patience.
As for tags, "college" means I've read it since starting college, "HS" means I read it in high school, and "pre-HS" means (you guessed it) I read it before high school, although some of the HS and most of the pre-HS books have disappeared over the years. Almost all of the other tags are places/centuries of origin or non-fiction categories.
Real nameErin
LocationChicago, formerly Iowa
Account typepublic, lifetime
Connection NewsConnection News
URLs
http://www.librarything.com/profile/wunderkind (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/wunderkind (library)
Member sinceApr 9, 2007
Comments from other LibraryThing-ers
(Leave a comment.)
Thanks for your comment re: my World War 2 books, and the info about the Blitz Books group. I haven't really got to grips with the social side of Librarything yet (too busy cataloguing!), but will definitely be checking out that group when I do. I'm adding you as an interesting library too - I haven't had time to browse properly yet, but look forward to revisiting you once the adding frenzy is over.
posted by Sovay at 6:13 pm (EST) on May 19, 2008
posted by passy at 7:12 pm (EST) on May 13, 2008
posted by passy at 10:45 am (EST) on May 2, 2008
posted by goldfishdevastation at 9:10 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2008
posted by passy at 4:25 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2008
posted by passy at 3:48 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2008
posted by DameMuriel at 2:10 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2008
posted by universehall at 7:23 pm (EST) on Apr 23, 2008
posted by stringcat3 at 3:05 pm (EST) on Apr 19, 2008
posted by universehall at 8:06 pm (EST) on Apr 18, 2008
I highly recommend Benson's "Queen Lucia". I have a review of it up, addressing my view of the book when I read it for the first time...!
posted by universehall at 11:25 am (EST) on Apr 16, 2008
2 new books just arrived in my mailbox: "Sixpence House" & "The Child That Books Built", both recommended by fellow LTers. I also discovered BBC Radio 4 online thanks to another member & have been positively glued to my mac since. There are sooo many great programs; I'll never get through them all! Cheers! Judie
posted by passy at 3:02 pm (EST) on Apr 14, 2008
posted by redredshoes at 11:16 pm (EST) on Apr 7, 2008
posted by notmyrealname at 4:14 am (EST) on Mar 3, 2008
posted by DameMuriel at 4:43 pm (EST) on Feb 15, 2008
posted by sollocks at 9:52 am (EST) on Feb 4, 2008
do drop by my blog if you have time http://thebookaholic.blogspot.com
posted by bibliobibuli at 12:00 am (EST) on Feb 1, 2008
Thanks for adding me to your list of 'Interesting Libraries', of course I don't mind at all,in fact I am always delighted when somebody does this as it shows that I must be doing something right with the way that I am putting my Library together.
Re SOE books. These are part of a collection put together in the main by my wife who is quite an expert in the subject.They have been collected over quite a few years.She says to tell you that the books by M.R.D.Foot are especially accurate and his facts on the subject are correct.
Best wishes from the UK
posted by devenish at 7:02 am (EST) on Jan 31, 2008
Thanks for visiting my profile. Some of my best friends are from Iowa ;)... and Chicago for that matter.
I'm from Missouri, Kansas City area. Wow, going to the University of Chicago! No wonder you go by the name wunderkind. Ah, college life, my oldest son is in high school and starting to examine colleges... Chicago is up there with MIT in his mind as his dream school (if only we won the lottery).
I'm pretty new here at Library Thing, thanks again for the welcome and visit.
Bonnie
posted by bereader at 12:07 pm (EST) on Jan 11, 2008
posted by strandbooks at 5:31 pm (EST) on Oct 18, 2007
Thank you for your kind message. Yes, Beryl Bainbridge is fabulous, isn't she? I particularly enjoyed [An Awfully Big Adventure] - I wasn't expecting that very clever twist. I discovered later that she has quite a background in theatre, which explains a lot of the feel of authenticity. (Another book which is a little like that is [Swish of the Curtain] written by [[Pamela Brown]] when she was only 14. I grew up with it and loved it - keep intending to purchase a copy and not quite getting round to it. Thoroughly recommend it.) [The Bottle Factory Outing] which I don't currently own was also rather good.
Looking forward to getting to know you through your tasteful library!
Allie
posted by AllieW at 2:39 pm (EST) on Sep 25, 2007
posted by shearrob at 4:40 pm (EST) on Sep 8, 2007
I'm spending some time in Chicago soon. Any good bookshops you can recommend? The more secondhand and esoteric the better!
Rob
posted by shearrob at 12:38 pm (EST) on Sep 8, 2007
Happy cataloging to you.
posted by coffeezombie at 12:29 pm (EST) on Sep 8, 2007
posted by the_terrible_trivium at 10:06 pm (EST) on Jul 17, 2007
I've been interested in the whole Scott phenomenon for years. I saw this program on PBS called "The Last Place on Earth" (also a book that I very highly recommend) about the race to the South Pole between Scott & Amundsen and I couldn't find enough to read after that.
posted by bcquinnsmom at 5:06 am (EST) on Jun 5, 2007
posted by bcquinnsmom at 5:52 am (EST) on Jun 3, 2007
At entrance, the student took placement tests in all these subjects, and "placed out" of any where the test results showed sufficient competence. The courses were identical, no matter who taught them. The syllabi and the exams were prepared by committees; the courses by the departments, and the exams by the committee on standards. The head of the exam committee was Benjamin Bloom, author of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives' which was the precursor to programmed instruction. The exams took six hours each, were multiple choice, had two essays, and were very difficult because all the answers were good, only some were more correct than others.The courses had two lectures and three discussion sections per week. Class attendance was not required. If you wanted to, you could take the exam and skip the course. Some people placed out of the whole college and went straight into grad school. Students were accepted after high school graduation if they didn't want to enter early.
The discussion sections emphasized socratic method, and the syllabi emphasized original material. The only textbooks we had were in physiology, and biology. There seemed to be an emphasis on Aristotle in almost every course. Hutchins, with Mortimer Adler of 'Great Books" fame, thought that a real liberal education was the learning of legal reasoning applied to the great masterpieces of science, philosophy, history, and literature. We read Kepler, Copernicus and Einstein, for example, in Physical Science, and "Swann's Way by Proust in Humanities 2. If you didn't get a decent grade on a 'comp' (comprehensive exam) you could take it again for five dollars. However, it was so difficult, that if you didn't study for at least three months, it didn't pay to try. If you were in residence for three quarters, you could leave, do the reading and take the exams using proctors at another university and graduate. (That is what I did. I did my last year (Physics, philosophy, history and french) in Puerto Rico in absentia where my husband had his first teaching job and I had my first baby. They wouldn't let me graduate until I did a French oral exam in the French department. They didn't trust proctors with my French accent!
It taught me how to study, how to think analytically, and to appreciate the great works over digestions by lesser mortals. I have been grateful for the experience all my life.
posted by almigwin at 2:40 am (EST) on May 15, 2007
posted by stringcat3 at 6:36 pm (EST) on Apr 30, 2007
Twoey (Twofa, Two-Two, You Horrible Little Animal) never says he's sorry. Of course, he never holds a grudge either, an unusual trait in a cat.
Have I seen Jeremy Brett as Holmes, wunderkind asks. The correct question is, how many times have I seen each episode, even the later ones where the divine Brett of blessed memory is all puffy from medication? Beyond counting, I answer. Many have complained that Brett was too histrionic, but close reading of the Canon shows that Holmes was indeed highly strung, given to theatrical gestures and effects, and often teetering too close to the edge. While Brett's performance can be excessively "stagey"(e.g., the drug hallucinations in "The Devil's Foot) I think no one has ever given us such a complex interpretation of an often filmed, or played, character. The plan was to film the entire Canon, but Brett's untimely death of course put an end to that happy thought.
posted by stringcat3 at 1:34 am (EST) on Apr 30, 2007
Try some of the critical books on Holmes, as well. I need to get back to the genre. I can't recommend anything off the top of my overly multitasked head.
That's Twoey the Bad Cat. I stuck him up on top of the Patrick O'Brien books one day, and he assumed this position. Why "the Bad Cat" you ask? Some of his recent misdeeds: three weeks ago he bit our oldest cat, it went septic ($300 at vet); two weeks ago, he got in a fight with the neighbor's cat, lost his new collar and ended up with a deep infected shoulder wound ($225 at vet). The following week I discovered he had whizzed on two volumes of a four-volume hardcover set of Orwell's letters, essays and journalism that was on a bottom shelf. We would have killed him a long time ago if he weren't so cute.
posted by stringcat3 at 1:32 pm (EST) on Apr 23, 2007
posted by stringcat3 at 3:00 am (EST) on Apr 19, 2007
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